Dead Souls by Ian Rankin Read Free Book Online Page B

He’d added a record deck to her CD system. In a bag under the bookshelf he found his last purchases from Backbeat Records: Light of Darkness and Writing on the Wall, two Scottish bands he vaguely remembered from times past. As he sat to listen, he wondered why it was he was only ever happy on rewind. He thought back to times when he’d been happy, realising that at the time he hadn’t felt happy: it was only in retrospect that it dawned on him. Why was that? He sat back with eyes closed. Incredible String Band: ‘The Half-Remarkable Question’. Segue to Brian Eno: ‘Everything Merges with the Night’. He saw Janice Playfair the way she’d been the night she’d laid him out, the night that had changed everything. And he saw Alec Chisholm, who’d walked away from school one day and never been seen again. He didn’t have Alec’s face, just a vague outline and a way of standing, of composing himself. Alec the brainy one, the one who was going to go far.
    Only nobody’d expected him to go the way he did.
    Without opening his eyes, Rebus knew Jack Morton was seated in the chair across from him. Could Jack hear the music? He never spoke, so it was hard to know ifsounds meant anything to him. He was waiting for the track called ‘Bogeyman’; listening and waiting …
    It was nearly dawn when, on her way back from the toilet, Patience removed the headphones from his sleeping form and threw a blanket over him.

6
    There were three men in the room, all in uniform, all wanting to hit Cary Oakes. He could see it in their eyes, in the way they stood half-tensed, cheekbones working at wads of gum. He made a sudden movement, but only stretching his legs out, shifting his weight on the chair, arching his head back so it caught the full glare of the sun, streaming through the high window. Bathed in heat and light, he felt the smile stretch across his face. His mother had always told him, ‘Your face shines when you smile, Cary.’ Crazy old woman, even back then. She’d had one of those double sinks in the kitchen, with a mangle you could fix between them. Wash the clothes in one sink, then through the mangle into the other. He’d stuck the tips of his fingers against the rollers once, started cranking the handle until it hurt.
    Three prison guards: that’s what they reckoned Cary Oakes was worth. Three guards, and chains for his legs and arms.
    ‘Hey, guys,’ he said, pointing his chin at them. ‘Take your best shot.’
    ‘Can it, Oakes.’
    Cary Oakes grinned again. He’d forced a reaction: of such small victories were his days made. The guard who’d spoken, the one with the tag identifying him as SAUNDERS, did tend towards the excitable. Oakes narrowed his eyes and imagined the moustached face pressed against a mangle, imagined the strength needed to force that face all the way through. Oakes rubbed his stomach; not so much as an ounce of flab there, despite the food they triedto serve him. He stuck to vegetables and fruit, water and juices. Had to keep the brain in gear. A lot of the other prisoners, they’d slipped into neutral, engines revving but heading nowhere. A stretch of confinement could do that to you, make you start believing things that weren’t true. Oakes kept up with events, had magazine and newspaper subscriptions, watched current affairs on TV and avoided everything else, except maybe a little sport. But even sport was a kind of novocaine. Instead of watching the screen, he watched the other faces, saw them heavy-lidded, no need to concentrate, like babies being spoon-fed contentment, bellies and brains filled to capacity with warmed-over gunk.
    He started whistling a Beatles song: ‘Good Day, Sunshine’, wondering if any of the guards would know it. Potential for another reaction. But then the door opened and his attorney came in. His fifth lawyer in sixteen years, not a bad average, batting .300. This lawyer was young – mid-twenties – and wore blue blazers with cream slacks, a combination